Sid in Ice Age: Who He Is, Who Voices Him and His Story

Sid is a ground sloth, a clumsy and talkative animal who is left behind by his own group in the first film while everyone else heads south to escape the coming ice age. He is attacked on his own until Manny, a grumpy woolly mammoth going the other way, grudgingly saves him. In Ice Age (2002), Sid then trails after Manny, and that unwanted friendship becomes the core of the franchise. The credits list him as "Sid (voice)".

The voice behind him is John Leguizamo, who is billed second in each of the five theatrical films, after Ray Romano as Manny. Those films are Ice Age (2002), Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Ice Age: Continental Drift and Ice Age: Collision Course.

In the Disney+ spinoff The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild (2022), directed by John Donkin, Jake Green voices Sid, while Simon Pegg leads the film as Buck. If you are hunting for Sid toys, the Ice Age merchandise page is the place to start, and the full list of herd members sits on the Ice Age characters page.

Sid begins as the animal nobody wants and ends as the glue of the herd. In Ice Age (2002), he and Manny find a human baby and try to return him to his people. Diego, a sabertooth sent by the pack leader Soto to snatch the child, offers to guide them while secretly planning an ambush. Through a string of mishaps the three bond, Diego saves Manny from Soto, and the trio head south together.

In Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), directed by Carlos Saldanha, a vulture warns that the valley's ice wall is a dam about to burst, and Sid joins the migration toward a boat at the far end. Late in the film he revives Scrat, who then attacks him because he thinks Sid took his acorn.

Sid's biggest personal storyline arrives in Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (2009). He longs for a family, takes three large eggs from an ice cave and hatches baby Tyrannosaurs. Their enormous mother drags him to a hidden jungle of living dinosaurs, and he grows fond of the babies and their mother before he says goodbye.

In Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), directed by Michael Thurmeier and Steve Martino, Sid, Manny, Diego and Sid's Granny drift out to sea on a slab of ice and fall into the hands of the pirate Captain Gutt. In Ice Age: Collision Course (2016), Sid by mistake destroys the crystals that keep the residents of Geotopia young, and the herd has to put it right. In The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, Sid is one of the older herd members who doubt that Crash and Eddie can look after themselves.

Sid's closest bonds are with the two animals he met in the first film, and Brooke joins his circle late in the series. Manny is the reluctant friend who saved him in the opening film, and you can read more on the Manny Ice Age page. Diego is the third corner of the trio, and his arc is covered on the Diego Ice Age page. In The Meltdown, Scrat attacks Sid after Sid revives him, because Scrat believes Sid took his acorn, and the squirrel has his own page at Scrat Ice Age.

Sid also has family of a sort. His Granny, voiced by Wanda Sykes, comes along on the drifting ice slab in Continental Drift, and she has her own entry at Granny Ice Age. In Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the baby Tyrannosaurs he hatches and their mother are the closest he comes to a family of his own.

Brooke, voiced by Jessie J in Collision Course, is a Geotopian who persuades her people to help the herd despite Sid's mistake, and she is reunited with him at the wedding of Peaches and Julian. The herd's other members include Ellie, Crash and Eddie, and Buck, who each have their own pages, such as Buck Ice Age.

Sid survives every film and never dies, so his status at the end of the series so far is alive and still with the herd. In Collision Course, the crystal fueled eruption pushes the main asteroid away, a crystal shard that falls into a hot spring gives the Geotopians their youth back, and Brooke is reunited with Sid at Peaches and Julian's wedding.

In The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, Crash and Eddie choose to stay in the Lost World, and Manny, Sid, Diego and Ellie promise to visit them often.

The next film in the series is Ice Age: Boiling Point, which is in production with a US theatrical release set for February 5, 2027, according to TheWrap. The full run of films is laid out in the Ice Age movies in order guide.

In my opinion, Sid's best moments are the ones where his loneliness shows through the jokes, and the strongest is the egg storyline in Dawn of the Dinosaurs. A sloth who was abandoned by his own group in the first film takes three eggs and decides they are his children, which is funny and sad at once. It could be argued that this is the most grown up thing the series does with him, because the goodbye to the dinosaur family has real weight for a parent watching with a child.

My second pick is the first film's opening act, where Sid trails after Manny, who only wants to be left alone. It sets up an annoying friend who turns out to be loyal, and perhaps the best comparison is a school friend who talks too much and whom you cannot imagine the group without.

Third, I enjoy the Collision Course mistake with the Geotopian crystals, because it lets Sid be the cause of a problem rather than the victim of one. His reunion with Brooke at the wedding gives that a warm finish.

For a parent choosing a film for a younger child, I would start with Dawn of the Dinosaurs, rated PG in the US, as the best showcase of Sid.